First of all, sorry about the late arrival of the newsletter. I've been pretty busy recently and have been unable to get this out to you before now. One of the many things I've been doing recently is putting together an interview with science fiction author Terry Pratchett (as some of you may know, I co-host a show on 5UV AM in Adelaide, South Australia and we play one Goodies song on each show, you'll be pleased to know). During the interview, the interviewer, Rastous (who is also a club member), asked Terry whether he was a fan of The Goodies and Terry replied that he was. I'll be publishing exactly what Terry said about The Goodies in next month's newsletter, so Pratchett fans, look out for that one. And now a quick and slightly irrelevant plug, you can hear the interview with Terry, on our show at 10.10pm Adelaide time, Friday 25th July. Those with sounds cards can also tune in, via real audio http://www.adelaide.edu.au/5UV/frames/broadcastframe.html .

Also, in the past week I went on 5UV's breakfast programme, Radio Expresso with John Murch and John was kind enough to give me 20 minutes in which to plug this club. He also played a rather good cover of The Goodies theme, by Australian band Feverdream. I'll be giving you the details of where you cab get a copy of their album, featuring The Goodies theme next issue, too.

But in this month's issue we've got everything you need to know about the Goodies CD, the details of Graeme Garden's radio pilot "This Won't Hurt", Bill's exploits TV and radio and David McAnally's fabulous Goodies crossword. Plus, will the Goodies ever return? Read on, if you please.

CONTENTS

1. BOFFO IDEAS

2. SPOTTED!!!

3. GOODIES TRIVIA QUIZ ANSWERS

4. GOODIES CROSSWORD by David McAnally <dsm@maths.uq.edu.au>

1. BOFFO IDEAS

You can make it happen here. Liven up the club with a boffo idea for bob-a-job week. Mail <carrot@olis.net.au> with your comments, ideas or suggestions.

IRC MEETING

Everyone's invited to talk convention, to talk Goodies and just to generally talk until your server kicks you off at our second ever IRC meeting. The proposed date is Sunday 27th of July, which allowing for time differences might be Saturday night in some parts of the world. So what we want to know is whether this is a good time to meet. If you'd like to come to the meeting please give me some feedback on this. And if you could suggest a time, I'll see what I can do to accommodate as many interested persons as possible.

The location of the meeting hasn't been decided, but several members have suggested IRC servers or chat rooms, which I will be checking out in the next week. But in the meantime, let's hear what you have to say about this <carrot@olis.net.au>.

CONVENTION 2000

One thing we'll be bound to discuss on IRC is the convention, so please bring along your ideas. But in the meantime, here's a chance for new members (or old members who haven't got around to it) to let us know what you think about the convention idea:

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INSTRUCTIONS

1. Put a * in the [ ] next to your answer.

2. Send this form to <carrot@olis.net.au>.

QUESTIONS

1. In which city would you prefer the convention to be held?

ADELAIDE [ ]

ALICE SPRINGS [ ]

BRISBANE [ ]

CANBERRA [ ]

DARWIN [ ]

HOBART [ ]

MELBOURNE [ ]

PERTH [ ]

SYDNEY [ ]

2. If the convention is not held in your preferred city would you be willing to travel to another city to attend the convention?

YES [ ]

NO [ ]

3. What is the *maximum* amount of money you'd be willing to pay for entry to the convention and accommodation?

less than $50 [ ]

$50-100 [ ]

$100-150 [ ]

$150-200 [ ]

over $200 [ ]

*Your answers will be kept in strictest confidence *

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AUSTRALIAN PETITION

As you might have read in the last couple of issues, we'd like to send off our petition to get The Goodies re-screened, to the ABC in the next month or so. As the completed petition forms seem to be dribbling in rather slowly, I'm giving you all an extra month to get those final signatures on your sheets and stick them in the post. The address to send them to is:

Alison Bean

7 Sharpes Ave

Fulham Gardens

S.A. 5024

So hop to it people. I must have sent petition forms to hundreds of you guys and NOW is the time to send them back to me. Ta.

The release of any new item of Goodies merchandise is heartening to we fans - it shows that the program hasn't been completely forgotten. So when I read in last month's C&G that there was a new CD out, I was a happy chappy. And when I then heard a few weeks later that it would be available locally, for a mere $15, I was quite an ecstatic human indeed. The only question left in my mind was - what the hell was on it?

The CD is a compilation of 20 tracks drawn from the three albums recorded for Bradley's Records in 1974/5. Well, I say three. I mean two. Or perhaps one and a half. And then there's the six singles. It's all rather confusing really. The albums in question are:

* Best Of..... The Goodies (M7 MLX-150 - apparently released in Aust. only)

These albums were released in Australia on the M7 label (which also released Arthur Lowe's versions of "Making Whoopee" and "Sunny Boy" - it was that sort of label).

Some of the singles contain tracks released on The New Goodies LP. The other two albums (Greatest and Best Of...) each contain a different selection of singles tracks (between them covering all the tracks not on New LP), plus "The Goodies Theme" (from New LP), and "Charles Aznovoice", which was not released as a single. Overall, the three Bradley's LPs contain 22 tracks.

Those of you with advanced mathematical skills may have spotted a slight discrepancy, inasmuch as there are only 20 tracks on the CD. The two missing tracks are "Bounce" and the aforementioned "Charles Aznovoice". The omission is puzzling. The CD is 67 minutes long, and could easily accommodate these other two tracks. There doesn't seem to be any obvious copyright clearance problems. It's just very annoying that the CD represents only most, and not all, of the Goodies' Bradley's opus.

Enough of what it doesn't contain. It does contain almost all the songs from "The Goodies - Almost Live" TV episode (produced the following year), and these tracks should be familiar, at least to Australian fans. "Working The Line" is from the "Bunfight At The O.K. Tearooms" episode. A few songs (Baby Samba, Rock With A Policeman, Nappy Love and Sick Man Blues) originated on I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again. The version of the Goodies theme on the CD is that used from series 5 onwards. And of course, what Goodies album would be complete without a tonsil-ripping rendition of "Wild Thing"? (the only part of any Goodies episode my mother ever liked).

The cover is good, although "The Goodies" could have been a little more prominent. The photo from "Daylight Robbery On The Orient Express" is a nice touch, and quite apt too, since this CD is sure to brighten a Le Boring moment.

Right, that's the technical side out of the way. What about the quality of the content? The songs are... how shall I put this? ...not excessively humorous. They do not provoke fits of laughter. Let's face it - obviously you can't translate the Goodies' trademark visual comedy to LP, and it is highly unrealistic to expect the albums to be directly comparable to the TV shows. That said, most of the tracks are fun to listen to, and after two or three plays you'll be singing along to these bright, cheery tunes, and getting the occasional chuckle. Certainly, these songs don't deserve the reputation they have gained in some quarters of being childish rubbish (with the possible exception of "Father Christmas Do Not Touch Me").

What is often utterly overlooked is that Bill Oddie is a wonderful writer of "straight" songs. His 1964 single "Nothing Better To Do" is a perfect example of this. Imagine an album made up of some of the songs used as backing to the Goodies film sequences - Needed, Love (from "Give Police A Chance"), Are You Coming Out To Play? ("Cecily"), Hurry Postman ("Radio Goodies"), The One That Got Away ("Scotland") to name just a few. Not to mention the stirring anti-war They're Taking Over from "Way Outward Bound". Fantastic stuff. A CD of clean versions (ie. without all that annoying laughter) of these songs is almost too tempting to contemplate. I wonder whether the BBC, or Bill Oddie himself, has kept any tapes?

But back to reality. I would certainly urge everyone to buy a copy of "Yum Yum". Mind you, I urged everyone to buy a copy of "The Goodies Fact File" and look where that got us. It is encouraging to see that Music Collection International has decided there may be a market for Goodies CD, and if sales are good, hopefully they may consider it a worthwhile exercise to dig into the archives of Decca, Island, Columbia and E.M.I. to issue the other three LPs on CD. But in the meantime, don't throw out that vinyl yet.

.

DETAILS:

Yum Yum - The Very Best Of The Goodies.Music Club MCCD 294.Produced by and copyright 1997, Music Collection International. Original Bradley's recordings issued under licence from Castle Copyrights Limited.

Original recordings produced by Miki Antony. All compositions by Bill Oddie (published by Castle), except "Wild Thing", by ? Taylor (published by Dick James).

"YUM YUM - THE VERY BEST OF THE GOODIES" - MORE DETAILS

by Alison Bean <carrot@olis.net.au>

So after reading Matthew's article I'm sure you're all going to rush and buy this CD. And at only $15 in Australia and a similarly low price in the UK, why not? The only problem you should face is that according to various club members who've contacted us, this record is selling far better than the record companies expected. So you may have to get your record shop to order it in.

The other problem is that in some states of Australia it isn't even available. According to Festival Records (who are the distributors in Australia) it won't be available in South Australia until the 21st of July. Weird eh? And for those in North America or elsewhere you'll probably have to get through import. But since we've given you the serial number above, you shouldn't have too many problems with that.

And finally, since Matthew's criticised the CD a bit, I might as well have a go too. I must say that I agree with his statement that many of the songs on this CD are not exactly side-splitting, they ARE great to listen to though. "I'm A Teapot", "Funky Gibbon" and "The Cricklewood Shakedown" are particular faves of mine. But what I'm really hoping is that this CD will sell really, really well, so they'll bring out the other records on CD too. The Goodies' later records ("Nothing To Do With Us", "The Goodies Beastly Record" and "The Goodies Greatest Hits") have some very funny songs on them, "Elizabeth Rules - UK" (Bill's love song to Queen Elizabeth) and "Taking My Oyster For Walkies" (Graeme's love song to an oyster) are particularly hilarious. So all I can say is buy up big, we'd all love to hear these classic comedy songs on CD.

"YUM YUM - THE VERY BEST OF THE GOODIES" - THE COVER

by Duncan Lilly <duncan.lilly@uk.drsolomon.com>

The cover features a roll of square "Goodies" sweets (if you see what I mean...) and several loose sweets in wrappers with song titles written on them. There is also a picture of the Goodies themselves, all wearing Union Jack waistcoats - Bill is blowing a tiny toy trumpet, Tim's just standing and Graeme is holding a bunch of red fake flowers. (He has slightly dark glasses and a rather odd moustache/ beard growth on his chin (if that helps date the picture!)) The inlay folds out and has a lengthy introduction piece by Bill.

BILL PLUGS THE NEW CD ON "FUNNY BUSINESS"

by David Balston <david.balston@virgin.net>

Bill Oddie was on a late night comedy review programme (on ITV) called "Funny Business". He talked about how hugely successful the Goodies records were, related the tale of how the Goodies moved from the BBC to LWT and then got cancelled when the director of LWT changed and made rude comments about the Monkees!! (Much of what he talked about comes from the intro piece on the CD inlay) Bill also ruled out a Goodies reunion show ("It would frighten the kids!") - shame!

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE GOODIES?

Thanks to Brett Allender <bretta@comcirc.com.au> who sent me an article about The Goodies from a recent edition of the English Woman's Weekly. The article is called "Whatever happened to The Goodies?" and describes the success of the show, followed by their solo projects in the 80s. (Apparently Bill wrote a kids TV show called "The Bubblegum Brigade".) Other points of interest included a funny anecdote about Bill and his second wife Laura Beaumont (who used to be a hostess of "Sale Of The Century"). Apparently they thought it would be funny if they asked their friends for garden gnomes as wedding presents. Now they have a garden full of them!

But by far the best piece of information in this article is the following quote from Tim: "Recently we were talking about doing a Goodies special - you'll be pleased to hear, with more current jokes." Let's hope so! The down side to this is that Bill has said, during several different TV appearances in the past year, that their would be no reunion. On one of these appearances Tim was also present and he stated that he would like to bring the show back. So what, I wonder, is Graeme's opinion?

GRAEME ON "WHOSE LINE IS IT ANYWAY"

by Witold Tietze <s341743@student.uq.edu.au>

On 10th July, while watching "Whose Line Is It Anyway" on Foxtel, I spotted Graeme Garden as one of the contestants (and certainly the funniest). Checking the credits, I saw that the episode in question was made by Hat Trick Productions in 1988. It seems that this was the show's first season, as I have been watching it for about two months now, and it all seemed pretty new until recently. Looks like they ran out of new episodes.

TIM'S TV DINNER

by Duncan Lilly <duncan.lilly@uk.drsolomon.com> and David Balston <david.balston@virgin.net>

Each week in the Radio Times (TV and radio listings guide) there is a tiny little piece on the Food page about a celebrities favourite TV dinner - entitled "My TV Dinner" (Originality is obviously not their strong point!)

In the 12-18 July issue the celebrity is Tim Brooke-Taylor! The complete text of the article is:

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TIM BROOKE-TAYLOR: A REGULAR ON RADIO 4's I'M SORRY I HAVEN'T A CLUE

"My ideal TV dinner is one my wife concocted, which we call Gunge. It's basically pasta with chicken, golden cheese on top, and various spices and some mushroom soup. I think it's the nicest dish in the world, and a good enough reason for marrying the cook - although I didn't know about Gunge at the time. Otherwise, cream crackers, cheddar cheese, tangerines and a large bottle of red wine makes a really great TV dinner."

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So there you go, Timbo and his strange sounding TV meals!

I'M SORRY I HAVEN'T A CLUE

by David Balston <david.balston@virgin.net>

ISIHAC is back in what must be the shortest gap between seasons ever (and I've missed the first few episodes 'cos I didn't know about it in time). The series started on Radio 4 on Saturday 4th June 1997 with Paul Merton (who I seem to remember was used to replace the late Kenneth Williams on Just A Minute) for the first two episodes with Denise Coffey appearing for the second two weeks so I assume they are going to use a guest panellist format for this series, of course the obvious choice is Bill surely.

Well here as promised is a brief report regarding Graeme's pilot radio show - 'This Won't Hurt'.

The recording of took place on Saturday June 28th 1997, the recording was due to start at 7.30pm but all plans were ruined when a power failure caused by the heavy rain flooding rendered the recording studio useless. Half an hour after recording was due to take place, the audience were led to an emergency makeshift studio, in reality the room was a BBC boardroom (called I think the Chancellor's Chambers), a very grand room with paintings of former BBC director generals on the walls.

Emergency power cables ran across the floor and the lighting was provided by living room standard lamps and not very bright ones at that. Due to the small size of the studio, only eighty audience members were admitted so many people in the queue had to be turned away (considering these people had an extra half hour to wait outside in the cold, this was very unfortunate.)

So eventually the recording started after an introduction to the guest panellists who were on one team Helen Lederer (who was Bill's partner on 'Wowfabgroovy') and Philip Pope (ironically his current Radio 2 show 'The What If Show' had been blacked out by the same power failure problems earlier in the day). The opposing team consisted of Arnold Brown (one of Helen's co-stars on 'Hello Mum' and 'Hattie Hayridge' (Holly mk2 on Red Dwarf).

The show was a gentle quiz regarding all things medical such as name the disease from the symptoms, what unusual historic medicine ingredients were deigned were to cure and an improvised sketches with a loose medical link.

Graeme was the question master and he kept order in his usual humorous style with some great ad-libs. He was really struggling at times to read the script because the light was so appalling (I'd be surprised if he didn't go home with a headache after staining his eyes like that,) lesser presenters would of walked out but Graeme being the true professional ensured that the show went on.

The recording went on without any further hitches and took about 40 minutes, the only Goodies reference was a quick mention of 'Ecky Thump' by Phil. Congratulations must go to the staff of the BBC who managed to save the recording from cancellation by some clever improvisation in rigging up the studio in an area of broadcasting house the public wouldn't normally see, now lets send all our money to the BBC so we can buy them some heavy duty electric generators.

BILLY BRAGG DOES THE FUNKY GIBBON

David Balston <david.balston@virgin.net>

Completely useless news item - On last Friday's edition of Harry Hill (20th June 1997) Billy Bragg sung a bit of 'Funky Gibbon' on the pretext that Harry had just bought a lovely record - Billy Bragg sings the novelty records. This is a joke they use each week with different singers singing different genres of music.

TIM ON THE GENERATION GAME

by Charles <charles@goldsmiths.prestel.co.uk>

I was watching UK Gold a fortnight ago, or so, and TB-T appeared on Larry Grayson's Generation Game as a boffin type to adjudicate on the answers for some spuriously naff word game (in which both sides scored max. points). The fee compensated, I hope.

THE RECORDING OF "WOWFABGROOVY", WITH GUEST BILL ODDIE

by David Balston <david.balston@virgin.net>

The show itself was actually quite entertaining, unfortunately Bill injured his back shortly before the show but he managed to make it through the show and didn't show any sign of being in any pain during or after the show (after which they all went off for a photo shoot.)

Bill's show was the first edition in the new series (broadcast at 10pm on 3rd July 1997). Bill's team captain was Helen Lederer and they were up against Jeremy Hardy and Barbara Dickson. Johnnie Walker was the question master and the questions were based around the Music, Sport and Entertainment of the 60's, 70's and 80's which gave the teams a chance to reminisce about important events in their lives. Jeremy was asked about "I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again" and asked to name the cast, he nearly forgot Bill (but Johnnie helped him out by pointing at Bill, lucky it's radio eh!.) Jeremy was however able to sing the ISIRTA theme song which pleased Bill as he claimed he'll get the money for the song's performance on radio. Any way thanks to a very good performance on the final buzzer round, Bill managed to win the game for his team.

A completely useless piece of trivia, Bill was wearing a Simpsons T-Shirt (the one with a silhouette of Homer throttling Bart.) I wonder if he's got any Goodies T-Shirts left.

GOODIES ARTICLE IN DREAMWATCH MAGAZINE

There is an article about The Goodies, written by Keith Topping <keith@tooon.demon.co.uk> in issue #34 (May 1997) of Dreamwatch magazine. You can check out their new web site http://www.dreamwatch.co.uk or simply mail order from PO Box 1015, Brighton, BN2 2YU, United Kingdom (for #2.95 + 75p package and posting; or $6.99 + $1 postage from the US; or #4.70 + 75p package and posting anywhere in the rest of the world).

3. GOODIES TRIVIA QUIZ ANSWERS

The answers to last month's brain-teasers, written by quiz-master David McAnally <dsm@maths.uq.edu.au>.

1. What surprising win did Tim have in the episode "Chubbie Chumps"?

A: Ms Housewife.

2. Who did Graeme marry in "Women's Lib"?

A: His computer.

3. What did all of the animals have in common in "Black and White Beauty"?

A: They were all named 'Kenneth'.

4. According to the Druid Priest, in "Wacky Wales", what does the word 'Eisteddfod' mean?

A: The Druid Priest commented that 'Eisteddfod' is an old Welsh word from the old Welsh - coming from two words: 'eistedd' meaning 'bored' and 'fod' meaning 'stiff'."

Sorry to some of you who sent in Spotteds this month. Due to the length of this month's newsletter, your Spotteds will appear next month.

And finally don't forget Tim Brooke-Taylor's 57th birthday on the 17th July. Spend the day making patriotic speeches and hiding in cupboards!

Cheerio,

Alison Bean.

<carrot@olis.net.au>

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DISCLAIMER

This is an archive newsletter of The Goodies Rule - OK! International Fan Club (copyright The Goodies Rule - OK! 1997). Some of the information in this newsletter may now be incorrect. Current information can be obtained from http://www.goodiesruleok.com

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